Bheadh aon duine a bhí ag léamh na bpáipéar ar maidin buailte leis na scéalta tithíochta agus an méid scéalta atá ann. Insíonn gach ceann acu a scéal féin. Is scéalta iad faoi theipeanna an Rialtais, faoi ghealltanais atá briste agus faoi spriocanna nach bhfuil bainte amach. Is é an rud is tábhachtaí ná gur scéalta iad faoi fíorfhulaingt ghnáthdhaoine na tíre seo. Inniu, cluineann muid go bhfuil níos lú tithe tógtha ag an Rialtas i mbliana go dtí seo ná mar a bhí anuraidh. Tá sé dochreidte.

Anybody reading this morning's paper will be struck by the number of housing stories jumping out of the pages. Every one of these articles tells a story of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael failing in housing. They are stories of broken promises, missed targets, real human suffering, the long-promised crackdown on Airbnb abandoned, 2,000 renters at risk of homelessness in three months alone, vulture funds given a free rein under the Government to buy up more than 6,000 homes last year and the charging of rip-off rents. All the while, ordinary people struggle to buy a home they can afford. Probably the most shocking revelation is that the Government will miss its target of 40,000 completions this year by a country mile. Everyone knows the Minister's plan is failing and his targets are too low. That the Government built fewer homes in the first nine months of this year than last year shows a level of sheer incompetence that is off the charts. Sinn Féin has shown the Minister time and again through our housing plan how we can end the housing crisis and deliver and make homeownership affordable. It is a radically different approach that will bring homeownership back into the reach of ordinary working people. All the Government is capable of is more of the same. It is nowhere near meeting its targets despite all of the spin, which has been laid bare clearly by the CSO today. It tells us that in the first nine months of this year, just 21,634 houses were completed, compared with 22,325 in the same period last year.

The Minister tells us that housing is a priority for the Government. How in the name of God has the Government delivered fewer houses so far this year than it delivered last year? It is incompetence that is off the charts. It is why house prices are out of control with a 10% increase in the past year, why rents are out of control and why we are seeing the highest level of homelessness ever. Every month, new records are broken by the Government. Its plan is in tatters. Every person and their dog knows that the Government's target of 40,000 homes is far too low in the first instance. The Housing Commission, the Opposition and experts have told it that. What is needed is a radically different approach but all this Government of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is able to give us is more of the same. The situation is spiralling out of control. That is why so many young people, for whom homeownership has collapsed, have decided to emigrate because they cannot see a future here under Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. In the dying of this Government, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael still cannot tell us what the new targets will be, never mind how they will deliver them. I have a simple question: does the Minister accept that there is no chance, despite all of his spin and all of his huffing and puffing, that the target of 40,000 completions this year will be reached? It is simply not deliverable. Will he continue with the delusion that his plan is working, despite all the evidence to the contrary?

Anois, an fhírinne. Ní aontaím leis an Teachta Doherty. Tá Sinn Féin i gcoinne gach rud agus gach plean a chuireann an Rialtas os comhair an phobail. Tá sé soiléir go bhfuil siad i gcoinne úinéireacht tí. Tá siad i gcoinne an deontais do dhaoine atá ag iarraidh a gcuid tithe féin a cheannach don chéad uair. Tá siad i gcoinne tithe ar phraghas réasúnta agus i gcoinne an scéim cíos agus ceannach. Tá sé sin soiléir freisin. Nílim cinnte cad iad na rudaí a bhfuil siad ar a shon, ach tá mé fíorchinnte faoi na rudaí a bhfuil Sinn Féin ina choinne. Tá ár bplean, Tithíocht do Chách, ag obair. Tá cúrsaí tithíochta ag dul chun cinn anois - tá sé sin soiléir freisin. Ní oibreodh plean an Teachta. Táim cinnte faoi sin freisin.

I will give the Deputy the truth. He takes facts and twists and turns them to suit his own political narrative. We have seen this in spades over the past two weeks. I will not conflate those issues. The reality is that the quarter 3 completion figures which were announced this morning at 11 a.m. are the highest on record. I know this will disappoint the Deputy. I will correct some of his figures. The target this year under Housing for All is 33,450. I have consistently said we will exceed that target. I still confidently predict - the Deputy and his colleagues in Sinn Féin will be disappointed - that it will be the high 30,000s to low 40,000s this year. There will be record completions in the last quarter of this year. Interestingly, Sinn Féin's housing spokesperson is not here this morning to hear this but the highest completion level in any local authority area in quarter 3 was in his constituency - and that of my ministerial colleague - in Clondalkin. That is even with all of Deputy Ó Broin's objections.

That is not true; take it back.

I can give loads of examples. The Deputy's party in this city alone-----

Deputy Ó Broin has not objected so please-----

I did not interrupt the Deputy once.

Stop lying.

The Deputy's party-----

Stop lying.

No.

It is a lie. I ask him to withdraw it. He should withdraw it.

It is not in order to accuse a colleague of lying.

I have asked him to withdraw it a number of times. He knows it is not true.

It is not in order and it will not happen here. You are not going to accuse a colleague of lying. Withdraw that statement, please.

I ask him to withdraw the statement which he knows is not true, and I am defending-----

Please. Do not-----

Let me say this - he is deliberately-----

Resume your seat-----

You asked me a question; I am going to answer it.

I will suspend the House. Withdraw the statement that a colleague has lied.

I will put on the record that he is deliberately misleading the Dáil because he cannot defend the fact that he delivered fewer houses this year than last. That is the problem. It is deflection.

Calm down, Deputy.

Tá an fear feargach ar ais arís.

It is okay for you; you might own your own home. I am talking about people who cannot own their own home.

I do not, in fact. Calm down.

Stop for a second; just relax. It will disappoint Deputy Doherty that we will exceed our target substantially this year, as we have done in every year of Housing for All. We have delivered 125,000 new homes. More than 500 first-time buyers a week are drawing down their mortgages using the supports this Government brought in, such as the help-to-buy grant. For people watching in, the help-to-buy grant is €30,000 of the tax they paid back in their pockets to help with their deposit. More than 50,000 households have claimed it. Sinn Féin and its housing spokesperson would abolish that even though many of his colleagues still submit parliamentary questions to me and my colleagues asking us to extend it. There is the first home scheme, the bridge the gap scheme, which has had more than 11,000 registrations and offers about €70,000 of supports. That is €100,000 combined for first-time buyers and the Deputy is against it. To get back to it, it is a fact that the Deputy's party members in Dublin city and county alone have objected to more than 6,000 homes in the past two years. For anyone, particularly a member of his party and Deputy Doherty as deputy leader, to accuse anyone else in this House of lying after his performance in the past two weeks is galling.

The facts speak for themselves. The CSO has cut right through the Minister's bluster and spin. The CSO has told us they are not their figures or what they are presenting. The CSO has told us in plain English this Government of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael has delivered less housing in the first nine months of this year than in the same period last year. That is a simple fact. The Minister tells us housing is a priority. He has told the House over and over again the housing target and output would be close to 40,000 units. That is not achievable. Will the Minister continue to live in the delusional state of expecting to deliver something like 19,000 homes in the next 12 weeks? It is not credible and everybody knows it is not credible.

Even if he delivered on those abysmally low targets, it is not enough. We have told him over and over again these targets have to be increased yet he will not provide new targets. We have shown him in our plan, which brings homeownership to an affordable level, how it can be done. That is why house prices increased by 10%, why we have record rents and why the Minister is allowing vulture funds to run amok. They bought 6,200 houses last year in the city of Dublin. Does the Minister believe in the delusion he has presented up until now of 40,000 units being delivered this year, or does he accept he has delivered fewer houses so far this year than last year?

Beidh díomá ar an Teachta because déanfaimid níos mó ná ár sprioc an bhliain seo. Táim cinnte faoi sin. We will deliver high 30,000s or early 40,000s this year. I talk to people who are building and I am out around the Twenty-Six Counties of the Republic. Deutsche Bank's report confidently predicts over 40,000 units this year. Cairn, one of the home builders, also predicts over 40,000 this year. The Deputy should know but probably does not that the highest level of delivery last year and in previous years was in the last quarter. The Government has delivered 125,000 new homes since it came into office, including affordable homes for the first time in a generation. We built more-----

You built 100 affordable homes.

Come on, Deputy. Stop now.

Affordable homes are not €470,000, Minister. Cop on.

Please.

That is delusion.

Pearse, can I-----

I have asked. Please go on.

The fact of the matter is this Government delivered more new social homes last year than has been done in 50 years and will do more this year. We will achieve our social housing new-build targets this year and will exceed our affordable housing targets this year. We have more first-time buyers than we have had since 2006 with the supports we have brought in, which the Deputy would get rid of. He and his party are against homeownership.

Homeownership has collapsed under this Government. It is ridiculous.

Your plan should be called "A home you'll never own" because what are you replacing our supports with?

One hundred thousand people under the age of 40 do not own their home anymore compared to when Fine Gael came into government.

Excuse me, Deputy. You are going to ask people to buy a property on land they do not even own-----

For €250,000.

-----tell them who they can sell it to, how much they can sell it for and where they will live.

That is delusion.

What planet are you living on, Deputy?

Fewer houses. It is unbelievable.

I return to the issue of housing. It is the single biggest issue we all hear about every day across every constituency and community. It is at the root of so many problems holding back our country and people. The Minister and his Government colleagues are well aware of this. There is the exodus of nurses, midwives and doctors from our shores, which was one of the issues debated in a Labour Private Members' motion yesterday; teacher shortages, with half of our schools understaffed this year, which I raised with the Taoiseach yesterday; and the misery of homelessness, people evicted onto our streets and rising numbers of people, families and children in emergency accommodation. All of this is due to the housing crisis.

Threshold reports today a 17.5% increase in the number of households seeking its assistance compared to last year. The Minister is in office more than four years. His Housing for All plan has been in place for three, but by any objective standards - just looking at this calmly and rationally without trading insults across the floor - the plan has failed. Rents, evictions and house prices are up and, most worryingly, the number of people in homelessness is up. Tomorrow we will learn how many people are homeless in the updated official figures.

Here is how the Minister could and should have spent the past four years: giving renters legal protections by passing our renters rights Bill; protecting children from homelessness, on which Labour put forward the Housing (Homeless Families) Bill; and, crucially, increasing building targets and building more homes. The single biggest impact he could have had is through the construction of more social and affordable homes. Building such homes takes adults out of childhood bedrooms, families out of emergency accommodation and renters out of an overcrowded and overheated private rented sector.

The problem is that housing targets are a fiction. Last year we put it to the Minister that at least 50,000 new builds would be needed each year to meet demand. Some of his colleagues scoffed at that at the time but the Minister has now admitted Housing for All targets are too low to meet the real level of need. The Tánaiste has admitted this, as have the Taoiseach and his predecessor, Deputy Varadkar.

Despite the fact the Minister consistently falls short of his own inadequate social and affordable targets, he continues to boast of exceeding overall objectives. He did it on Tuesday during oral questions on housing and just now he made reference to the quarter 3 output figures and said completions are likely to be in the late 30,000s or early 40,000s units this year. We welcome that and any increase in delivery of housing. Everyone in opposition and government should do that, but we have to acknowledge, as does the Minister, that that is still not enough. The level of need is far greater. Every objective body from the CSO to housing and construction experts tell us this, so it is ridiculous to be self-congratulatory on meeting targets when the dogs in the street know the targets are too low.

I have been asking the Minister for years when we will increase the targets, as have others. Each time he says revised targets are on the way. We are approaching the end of October. Can the Minister say whether the revised building targets will be out in the next two weeks or will we have to wait until the next Dáil term?

Housing remains the number one societal issue for this State, unquestionably. There is no self-congratulatory tone from the Government side. I was honest with people when I had the honour of being made housing Minister in 2020 that the Government was bringing in a new housing plan and was dealing with much unmet demand. There was a ten-year period when, for many reasons, not enough homes were being built to meet demand. There is still a legacy of that. All I state here today are the facts. The fact is that since the Government came into office, it has delivered 125,000 new homes. That is a significant amount. We will do more. We will add to that significantly in the last quarter, to the disappointment of some opposite.

I will get back to the Deputy's specific points. If I look at the targets for this year's new-build social housing and social housing across the board, we will attain those. I remind the House that last year we delivered just short of 12,000 new social homes across all delivery mechanisms. When we came into government, there were no affordable homes being delivered in 2020 - none. We went from zero to 1,757 the first year, to 4,011 last year and our target this year is 6,400. We will exceed that target this year, which is very significant.

To take the Deputy's point in the constructive way she raised it, of course we need to do more but we have shown how we can scale up delivery. When the Government came into office, 20,000 homes were built in 2020. This year, even though Deputy Doherty will be very disappointed with this, we will deliver close to 40,000, nearly doubling output. Do we need to scale that up further? Absolutely we do.

I listened to Threshold's chief executive John-Mark McCafferty this morning on radio. He is someone I hold in high regard. He was very complimentary about the tenant in situ scheme and how that works. Last year we set a target of 1,500. We changed tack last year to protect tenancies. We bought over 1,800 homes. We ended unsecure HAP tenancies and converted them to social housing tenancies, adding to our social housing stock. We will exceed our target of 1,500 this year. It has been an important preventative measure. Separate to that, in the period the Government has been in office, 14,000 HAP tenancies have been converted into new social homes. The Simon Community, Focus Ireland and Threshold all recognise, unlike some, the progress being made and that there is more social housing stock now and more options for our people.

The number one issue remains - I agree with Deputy Bacik on this - those who do not have a home at all and those who are in emergency accommodation. What gives me cause for optimism is in quarter 2 this year we exited 630 families from emergency accommodation into permanent secure homes. People are spending less time in emergency accommodation now. The numbers are still rising and I am acutely aware that behind those numbers are people, families and kids. I know that. It is the first thing I think about every single day when I wake up. That is what drives us and the Government to deliver more social homes. Supply is the answer there.

I thank the Minister, but with respect he has not answered the question about when the revised housing targets will be published. He referred to the legacy shortfall, but we acknowledge that. I think everyone recognises that. To go back to another canine analogy, we talked about the dogs on the street, but it is a bit like saying the dog ate my homework for the Government to say this is a legacy issue and it is trying to deal with it.

It is your legacy.

The Minister and his colleagues need to be dealing with it with more urgency and ambition precisely because of that shortfall and because there is a cumulative impact to inaction and falling short of targets. The longer targets are left unmet or too low, the more difficult it is to play catch-up. That is what we are hearing from the construction industry, which is trying to build but has so many different obstacles in its way. Housing targets that are revised upwards really make a difference by setting out the level of ambition and emergency needed. The Minister has spoken about emergency accommodation and people moving out of that. The problem is so many families are moving into it just as the Government is moving people out. The tenant in situ scheme is simply ineffective for far too many families I hear from. We hear now that regulation of short-term letting, which was promised, will not be delivered. I ask the Minister again, in the dying days of the Government, to set out what he will do on revised housing targets to ensure better delivery.

The scaling up of investment in housing is unprecedented. This year we will invest €5.1 billion in housing, which is the highest amount ever. Next year we have budgeted for over €6 billion through all the funding mechanisms. The revised targets are being worked through right now in conjunction with the revised national planning framework. I cannot give the Deputy a definitive deadline on that, but it is important we set new targets. The three parties set targets, and I am sure the Deputy's party will do so as well. It is also important that we show people how we are going to get there, because there are some people in this House who will just pluck a figure from the sky and expect people to believe they can deliver 60,000, 70,000 or 80,000 houses in a year. They come forward with plans that do not stack up, with regard to new tenures of housing and various different ideas, but the people will decide upon that. We have always been very deliberate in our approach to setting targets and showing how they will be attained. A particular tool in our armoury to do that is the reform of our planning system. That is why we worked so hard to bring forward the Planning and Development Bill, which the President has signed into law. It is the single biggest reform of our planning system in over a quarter of a century, but not all parties here supported it. It will bring clarity, consistency and certainty to our planning system, which we need to underpin the increased delivery this State needs.

We will not see the targets this side of the election.

He will not answer the question.